President Obama Orders Review of the Email Hacking That Shook the Election

A White House official says the president has ordered a review of the email hacking that rattled the presidential campaign.

Obama’s counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco says intelligence and national security officials were told to report their findings to the president before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

U.S. intelligence officials have accused Russia of trying to interfere in last month’s election by hacking into Democratic officials’ email accounts. President Barack Obama has raised his concerns about Russia’s involvement directly with President Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump’s Choice for EPA Chief Is Skeptical of Climate Change

(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump will pick an ardent opponent of President Barack Obama’s measures to curb climate change as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a Trump transition team source said on Wednesday, a choice that enraged green activists and cheered the oil industry.

Trump’s choice, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, fits neatly with the Republican president-elect’s promise to cut back the EPA and free up drilling and coal mining, and signals the likely rollback of much of Obama’s environmental agenda.

Since becoming the top prosecutor for the major oil and gas producing state in 2011, Pruitt has launched multiple lawsuits against regulations put forward by the agency he is now poised to lead, suing to block federal measures to reduce smog and curb toxic emissions from power plants.

He is also a leading figure in a legal effort by several states to throw out the EPA‘s Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obama’s climate change strategy that requires states to curb carbon output.

In an interview with Reuters in September, Pruitt said he sees the Clean Power Plan as a form of federal “coercion and commandeering” of energy policy and that his state should have “sovereignty to make decisions for its own markets.”

Pruitt, 48, has also said he is skeptical of climate change. In an opinion piece in an Oklahoma newspaper this year, he wrote that he believes the debate over global warming is “far from settled” and that scientists continue to disagree on the issue. An overwhelming majority of scientists around the world say manmade emissions are warming the planet.

The Obama administration finalized the Clean Power Plan in 2015 as a key part of meeting U.S. obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement, an accord among nearly 200 countries to curb global warming. Many scientists say warming is causing rising sea levels, drought, and an increase in ferocious storms.

Trump vowed during his campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris deal, saying it would put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage. Since the election, however, Trump has said he will keep an “open mind” about the climate deal, and also met with leading climate change activist and former Vice President Al Gore.

Trump, a real estate magnate who takes office on Jan. 20, is in the midst of building his administration and is holding scores of interviews at his office in New York.

‘FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE’

Environmental groups and former Obama officials bristled at the choice of Pruitt.

“Scott Pruitt running the EPA is like the fox guarding the henhouse,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, which supported Trump’s opponent in the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“Time and again, he has fought to pad the profits of Big Polluters at the expense of public health.”

Heather Zichal, a former Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change under Obama, said Trump’s choice was alarming.

“You can meet with Al Gore on Monday, pledge to keep Teddy Roosevelt’s environmental legacy alive on Tuesday, but if you nominate the Clean Power Act’s leading opponent to head the EPAon Wednesday, you’re making an unequivocal statement about the direction of your leadership,” she said.

But representatives of the oil industry, and some Republican lawmakers, were cheered by the pick.

Scott Segal, an energy industry lobbyist at Bracewell LLP called Pruitt “a measured and articulate student of environmental law and policy” who helped “keep EPA faithful to its statutory authority and respectful of the role of the states in our system of cooperative federalism.”

U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, also a climate change skeptic, said “Pruitt has fought back against unconstitutional and overzealous environmental regulations like Waters of the U.S. and the Clean Power Plan; he has proven that being a good steward of the environment does not mean burdening tax payers and businesses with red tape.”

Trump aides praised Pruitt’s conservative record.

“Attorney General Pruitt has a strong conservative record as a state prosecutor and has demonstrated a familiarity with laws and regulations impacting a large energy resource state,” one of the aides said on a transition team briefing call on Wednesday.

Donald Trump Is Going After Another Company for Sending Jobs Overseas

After working with Indiana-based manufacturer Carrier Corp. to keep some jobs in the state instead of shipping them off to Mexico, President-elect Donald Trump now has his sights set on another company, Rexnord Corp.

In a tweet sent late Friday, Trump went after Rexnord over its plans to move a plant from Indianapolis to Mexico. “Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers,” the tweet read. “This is happening all over our country. No more!”

Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more!

The president-elect spent the weekend tweeting his plans to both reduce taxes and loosen stiff regulations on businesses as incentives for companies to stay in the U.S., but also warned of consequences he hopes to impose on those who do leave. “There will be a tax on our soon to be strong border of 35% for these companies wanting to sell their product, cars, A.C. units, etc., back across the border,” Trump wrote.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is still governor of Indiana, did not fully commit to supporting Trump’s plans in interviews over the weekend. When asked about any future interventions, Pence responded that the president-elect would make decisions as they come.

“The president-elect will make those decisions on a day-by-day basis in the course of the transition, in the course of the administration,” he said on ABC’s This Week.

Rexnord, a Milwaukee-based company, plans to close a plant in Indianapolis by June of this year. The move would leave 300 employees with an average pay of $25 per hour out of work, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Justin Trudeau’s Chief of Staff Has A Message For Americans: Come to Canada

Katie Telford, Chief of Staff to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, got her start in politics at age 12, working as a page in her province’s legislature. Now she’s 38 and holds one of the most powerful positions in her nation.

Speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit on Wednesday, Telford shared her political education as well as her perspective on the U.S. election, which, she said, was closer in style to the Canadian national election (held in October 2015) than one might think, despite the strikingly different results. “We saw indications of what was to come,” she says. “There was a debate about voting rights and whether or not it was a positive thing for a woman to be allowed to wear a hijab. But at the end of the day, Canadians wanted to talk about the plight of the middle class.”

Trudeau, like President-elect Trump, stuck to an economic message—with a far more government-oriented solution—and won. Unlike Trump, he has already used his platform to focus specifically on women, naming Canada’s first Cabinet with gender parity—something that raised the ire of some, says Telford. “Many people said this was an attack on meritocracy,” she says. “Then we announced who they were and they have not said that since.”

Although Telford did not comment specifically on the U.S. election, she was happy to reach out to anyone disappointed by the results. “We welcome all of you,” she said with a smile. “Businesses, consider investing in and expanding in Canada!”

The Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971 to combat hate and intolerance, collected data from media reports and individual submissions to the SPLC’s #ReportHate page for the report, called Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election. The group found that 867 hate incidents had been reported since Trump’s win. Online harassment was not included in the count.

The study revealed that hate incidents have been reported in almost every state, and anti-immigrant harassment was the most reported type of incident. Schools (including K-12 and colleges) have been the most common venues for hate incidents. Also common were settings where strangers are likely to encounter one another, including in the street or in shops.

In addition to public places, the report showed people have been harassed in their own homes. “Many have reported receiving threatening messages on their front lawns, slipped under their front doors, left on their porches, and taped onto their windshields,” the report reads.

Donald Trump on the Alt-Right Movement: ‘It’s Not a Group I Want to Energize’

Donald Trump said he doesn’t feel that he’s done anything to energize the alt-right movement in a meeting with the New York Times on Tuesday.

“I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group,” the president-elect said, according to a tweet from Times writer Mike Grynbaum. He added: “If they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why.”

Trump added that public outcry about Stephen Bannon’s appointment to chief White House strategist was “hard” on Bannon. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, has given voice to racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and sexist views through Breitbart.

“If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him,” he said in response to a question from executive editor Dean Baquet, according to a tweet from Grynbaum. “I think it’s very hard on him. I think he’s having a hard time with it. Because it’s not him.”

Trump is asked about concerns from minority groups about Breitbart News’s coverage under Steve Bannon. His reply: pic.twitter.com/FBqCGwQpBr

The president-elect’s meeting with the New York Times came after he initially announced he had cancelled the scheduled meeting because the Times had changed its terms—something the newspaper said it had not done.

On Tuesday afternoon, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Baquet and a group of editors and reporters met with Trump and his team, including Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway.

During the sit-down meeting, Trump said he had “tremendous respect” for the newspaper and that he thinks he’s “been treated very rough,” by media coverage of his campaign, especially from the Times. Grynbaum tweeted that Trump’s remarks about his “rough” treatment lasted about 4 minutes.

Asked by the Times about whether he would “open up” libel laws, as he has previously threatened, Trump said someone told him, “You know, YOU might be sued a lot more.’ I said, ‘you know, I hadn’t thought of that,'” according to Grynbaum. He also said “I think you’ll be happy,” when questioned about his attitude toward the First Amendment.

Regarding world affairs, Trump told the Times that he has a “different view than everybody else” on Syria. “Syria, we have to solve that problem,” he said.

Trump also suggested his son-in-law Jared Kushner could help make peace between Israelis and Palestinians, according to a tweet from Times Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller.

Bernie Sanders Says Donald Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Is a ‘Scam’

Bernie Sanders called Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan a “scam” that only helps large companies and Wall Street billionaires on Monday.

Trump’s plan gives giant tax credits for private companies that invest in projects, lowering the cost of financing the project significantly. Sanders took issue with the tax loopholes afforded by the plan.

“Trump would allow corporations that have stashed their profits overseas to pay just a fraction of what the companies owe in federal taxes,” he wrote. “And then he would allow the companies to “invest” in infrastructure projects in exchange for even more tax breaks. Trump’s plan is corporate welfare coming and going.”

Sanders noted infrastructure in the U.S. is in great need of repair, and wrote that he would reintroduce the Rebuild America Act, which calls for the investment of $1 trillion over five years.

Others from the Democratic party, like Sen. Chuck Schumer, have said infrastructure is one legislative area where they can work with Trump.

Speaking from George Washington University, Sanders doubled down on his view on Bannon, whose controversial new post in Trump’s administration has been met with widespread criticism. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, has given voice to racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and white nationalist views through Breitbart.

“The president of the United States should not have a racist at his side,” Sanders told the crowd. “I call up on Mr. Trump to rescind the appointment of Mr. Bannon.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Sanders called Bannon’s appointment “totally unacceptable,” in a statement.

The senator also took Trump to task over issues such as climate change, and said if Trump did not make an effort to move away from using fossil fuel, the planet would become far less “healthy and habitable” for future generations.

What Trump Can Learn From Jimmy Carter’s Failure to ‘Drain the Swamp’

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “drain the swamp” of what he calls the corrupt Washington DC establishment. As he prepares to take power, those who voted for Trump—as well as some who didn’t—are hoping that his distance from the Beltway will allow him to deliver on this promise.

Trump may be tempted to double down on his status as the ultimate political outsider by filling his administration with fellow Washington neophytes, but that would be an awful mistake. He must rely on outsiders enough to retain the populist image so central to his political image, but not so much that his staff lacks the knowledge of how to actually get things done in the capital. Trump’s first personnel choices show him trying to strike a sensible balance: Reince Priebus as chief of staff will be able to draw on the insider insights afforded by his time as chairman of the Republican National Committee, while the appointment of former Breitbart News head Steve Bannon as chief strategist continues to position Trump as an insurgent.

During the campaign, Trump managed to remain aloof from Republican political professionals to a remarkable degree, and that choice turned out to serve him well. He has good reason to be skeptical of a Republican establishment that has been unpopular among voters for over a decade. The party’s mid-2000s Jack Abramoff–related scandals and complicity with special interests earned it a stinging rebuke in the 2006 congressional elections and made President George W. Bush historically unpopular by the end of his time in office. The following two Republican candidates, John McCain and Mitt Romney, positioned themselves as continuous with Bush-era Republicans, and arguably paid a political price for doing so. So Trump’s (and Bannon’s) understandable instinct may be to see offers of help from old hands of the Washington scene as Trojan horses.

Before Trump decides to spurn them, though, he should ponder the example of Jimmy Carter. Carter, too, sold himself to the American people as a real DC outsider, emphasizing his identity as a peanut farmer and born-again Christian whose only political experience was a single term as Georgia’s governor. And he stayed true to his roots after his victory over President Gerald Ford in 1976, staffing his White House with a close-knit group of associates that came to be known as the “Georgia Mafia,” including Budget Director Bert Lance, Attorney General Griffin Bell, Press Secretary Jody Powell, and his closest advisor, Hamilton Jordan. Meanwhile, he reduced the size of the White House staff by a third.

None had experience in Washington, and it soon showed. Carter’s administration quickly bungled its relationship with powerful Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill and other key members of Congress by making sure everyone knew that the new White House wanted no part of the economy of favors that had kept relations smooth in Washington. There were also a number of minor snubs, such as seating the speaker’s family near the kitchen at the inaugural ball, which led to animosity for Carter on Capitol Hill.

More importantly, a couple of months into his term, Carter put out a “hit list” of pork barrel projects he vowed he would never sign, which included a number of projects dear to O’Neill. Carter showed he wouldn’t just accept business as usual, but soon reneged on parts of his promise, undercutting his credibility. Congress retaliated at the Georgia Mafia’s high-handedness by refusing to pass administration priorities, including key parts of their consumer protection and tax plans. Before long, the country had formed the fair impression that Carter was acting like an amateur and out of his league in Washington, an image the president was never entirely able to shake.

So if Trump wants to succeed, he and his new team must understand that governing requires a coalition encompassing many established parts of the Republican Party and staff his government accordingly. Otherwise, he’s more likely to get stuck in fruitless political infighting than to enact sudden and lasting reforms. A one-term presidency like Carter’s—or worse, given the free-flying talk of impeachment these days—could result. Trump’s choice of Priebus as chief of staff indicates that the president-elect is attuned to this potential difficulty.

But if there are perils in being too much of an outsider, that hardly means that Trump has an easy path to a successful and widely accepted government by staffing his administration like just another conventional Republican. His promise of a clean break with the Bush-era party was central to his primary success, as was his self-portrayal as a winner who can change everything by driving a hard bargain. Settling in to business as usual could turn the American public deeply cynical of Trump’s presidency from the start. Bannon’s central role in the new administration suggests that Trump understands this, too.

Trump is sure to find that running a government is a good deal harder than selling his message on the campaign trail. While skepticism as to whether he can manage the transition is warranted, his first staffing decisions show good instincts toward striking a balance that will allow him to govern effectively.

How Seeing Other Opinions on Social Media Can Change Minds

If you spend enough time on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to convince yourself that both are just giant echo chambers where users with specific political views talk to each other and different viewpoints are ignored.

But new research suggests that’s not always the case.

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank located in Washington, D.C., being exposed to differing views via social media can actually cause people to rethink how they view a political issue. Not always, but sometimes.

The Pew study found that 20% of those surveyed said that they had modified their stance on a social or political issue because of something they saw on social media, and 17% said that viewpoints they encountered through social media had changed their views about a specific candidate.

Democrats were a little more likely than Republicans to say they had modified their views as a result of something they saw on social media, the study said.

The Pew Center’s researchers didn’t just ask this question. They also asked respondents to give them examples of specific times that such a change had occurred and why. According to their report, in most cases the viewpoints these users were exposed to changed their stance in a negative way.

For example, respondents who admitted that they had changed their minds about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton were more than three times as likely to say that their opinions had grown more negative than more positive. Said one survey taker:

I thought Donald Trump was leaning one way on an issue and a friend posted something that was opposite of what I believe. This caused me to think less of him than I once I did.

Those who mentioned that they had changed their opinion of Donald Trump based on social media posts, meanwhile, were almost five times more likely to have changed it in a negative direction rather than a positive one. Almost 20% said it became more negative, while just 4% said it became more positive.

Although the election and the current candidates were a big source of changes, the Pew Center also said that some respondents changed their minds about broader social issues as well.

Donald Trump outsmarted Hillary when it comes to earned media. Watch:

Almost 14% of those who said they had changed their views on a social question mentioned racial issues such as police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. Several users who said they were initially skeptical of such issues reported that they had changed their minds. Said one:

I’m white. Initially, I saw nothing wrong with saying ‘All lives matter’ – because all lives do matter. Through social media I’ve seen many explanations of why that statement is actually dismissive of the current problem of black lives seeming to matter less than others.

While these kinds of cases are encouraging, the researchers at Pew noted that the vast majority of social media users—approximately 82%—said they have never changed their views about a candidate based on what they saw someone else say, and 79% have never changed their views on a social issue.